Death on Account (The Lakeland Murders)

by Salkeld, J J

  ‘Old school loyalty, eh?’

  ‘An under-rated virtue. But no, I think its more fear of getting a knife in the back in prison that would keep Murphy quiet. He’d come out of prison a pensioner, but he’d be alive and wealthy with it.’

  ‘More than I can say for myself’ said Robinson gloomily.

  ‘Come on now, sir. Our pension is index linked, isn’t it? So a few more years inflation and you’ll be laughing.’

  PCs Jack Knowles and Erica Miles had only just started the back-shift, and they’d parked their marked Police Volvo at Plumgarths roundabout while they ate their chips and read their emails. They were both in a good mood, because they were off for the next few days, and they’d heard that the Super was getting the push. It had all the makings of an excellent shift.

  ‘Shall we take a drive through to Windermere?’ said Jack, after they’d been there for half an hour.

  ‘Why not? I can think of worse ways to spend an evening than a drive through the Lakes.’

  Just before Ings Erica noticed a flat-bed lorry with a big white power boat on it going the other way.

  ‘Have it’ said Erica, flicking on the blue lights and the video. Jack checked his mirrors and did a u-turn. He hit the throttle and felt the big car, heavily laden as it was, start to accelerate hard.

  They’d caught up with the lorry in under a mile and Jack positioned the car so that the lorry driver couldn’t miss him in his mirrors. Erica gave the siren a blast, but the lorry didn’t pull over.

  ‘This is a live one’ said Erica, reaching for the radio.

  Jack didn’t try to overtake, but stayed well back, only pulling out occasionally. ‘This must be our lucky night’ he said. ‘When’s the last time you stopped a truck on spec and it had nicked gear on board?’

  ‘We haven’t stopped it yet, Jack.’

  ‘They’re fucked though, aren’t they? If they’ve got any sense they’ll stop and bail out before we get to a lit section. Are you ready for a run?’

  ‘If I have to. I wish we hadn’t had those chips now though.’

  Whoever was in the lorry had obviously reached the same conclusion as Jack, because the lorry accelerated, indicated right, turned off its light, then braked hard and pulled in on the left. Erica called in and had her seatbelt off before Jack had stopped the car.

  ‘I’ll take the driver. Watch yourself, lass’ said Jack, as he swung his door open.

  Twenty minutes later it was all over. The driver had twisted his ankle when he jumped out of the cab, and Jack had him cuffed within a few yards of the front of the lorry. Erica wasn’t so lucky, but the two passengers were spotted by the helicopter when it arrived on scene twenty minutes later.

  At just before midnight Jack and Erica drove back towards town, having earned their break. They had no intention of stopping anyone, and were just chatting about what they’d both be doing on their days off. But that was before they saw the old Vectra driving into town ahead of them. It was barely doing thirty in a forty limit, and when the driver saw them in his mirrors he slowed down even more.

  ‘I don’t bloody believe it. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel tonight’ said Erica.

  ‘It’ll be Lord Lucan driving’ said Jack.

  ‘With Shergar in the passenger seat.’

  Erica flicked on the lights and the car stopped immediately. Jack was a bit disappointed. But when Erica opened the driver’s door she laughed out loud, and shouted back to Jack.

  ‘You won’t believe who we’ve got here, Jack. Better than Lord Lucan any day of the bloody week.’

  Saturday, 25th May

  PC Nobby Styles couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing from Erica Miles.

  ‘So he was pissed as a fart, the car was uninsured, and he had five hundred quid’s worth of Class A on him as well, which he freely admits he intended to supply?’

  ‘That’s about it, Nobby. If he says it with the Duty Solicitor in the room in the room then he’s yours. I’d have thought he’ll draw two years at least.’

  ‘I don’t fucking believe it. Don’t get me wrong, Erica, I couldn’t be happier. But Terry’s not a dealer, he’s not even a user. And to get nicked for drunk driving as well. That’s stupid, even by his standards, and let’s face it, his standards are not high.’

  ‘I know. It’s like he wanted us to stop him. Short of lobbing empty beer bottles at us or binning the car in a hedge he couldn’t have made it any more obvious that he was pissed up. But we thought you’d want to be the one to charge him, what with everything that’s happened.’

  ‘All right, Nobby?’ said Terry Walker cheerfully, when Nobby walked into the interview room with Erica Miles and Ian Mann.

  ‘How’s the head?’

  ‘Not too bad. I hear I was well over the limit.’

  ‘Yes, you were.’

  ‘And I had that gear as well, didn’t I?’

  ‘Terry, give us a chance. Just let me start the tape and we’ll get this done.’

  ‘Will you oppose bail?’

  ‘That’s not up to me Terry, you know that. Let’s get this all safely recorded and we can take it from there. All right?’

  The duty solicitor was smiling. The money was terrible, and the hours were worse, but it wasn’t every day that he got paid for doing absolutely bugger all. So he sat back and thought about what he’d have to do when he got in to the office, and had a tentative sip at the coffee that Erica had made for him. To his surprise it wasn’t bad at all.

  ‘So, Terry, you understand why you’ve been arrested?’

  ‘Aye, drink driving, and possession with intent to supply.’

  ‘That’s right. Shall we talk about the drink driving first? Whose car is it?’

  ‘A mate’s. He didn’t know I had it.’

  ‘So you were driving without the owner’s consent?’

  ‘That’s right, Nobby. I just picked his keys up off the bar and went for a drive.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Why? I don’t know. I was pissed, wasn’t I?’

  ‘And have you got any insurance?’

  ‘Of course not, and let me put it on record that I hate those ads on TV. The dog, that bloke singing, all of them.’

  ‘I’ll pass that on for you. I bet they take the views of pissed up, uninsured motorists very seriously. So let’s talk about that gear, three wraps wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right. Decent stuff too. I don’t sell rubbish.’

  ‘So you’re saying it wasn’t for personal consumption then, Terry?’

  ‘That’s right, Nobby. You know me, I don’t do drugs. No, I was planning to sell that gear down on the estate.’

  ‘So your plan was to supply?’

  ‘You got it.’ Terry looked pleased with himself.

  ‘And where did the drugs come from?’

  ‘You know better than that, Nobby. I’m no grass.’

  ‘Was it Alan Frostick?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Come on, Terry. You’ve been keen as mustard to grass yourself up, and it’s Frostick you’re frightened of, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m not frightened of Alan Frostick.’

  ‘Up to you, Terry, but I’m giving you the chance to get even with him.’

  ‘Would I get protection?’

  ‘I’ve already told you, Terry, I can’t offer you anything like that. But the judge would know that you’d co-operated with us. Don’t piss me about, Terry, you know how this works.’

  ‘Then that’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘Your choice. You know what happens now. You sign your statement, we charge you, and you’ll be up before the magistrate on Monday morning.’

  ‘So you’ll keep me here until then?’

  ‘No’ said Ian Mann firmly. ‘I’ve talked to the CPS and you’ll be pleased to know that we’re going to bail you, and we won’t oppose bail next week. In fact we’re going to say that we don’t see you as a flight risk, Terry. So that’s good news, eh?’

&nb
sp; ‘You can’t do that. I’ll draw two years for this. My solicitor told me.’ Terry turned to his solicitor, who sat up, looking slightly startled. ‘They can’t do this, can they?’

  The solicitor shrugged. ‘I can’t oppose bail on your behalf, Terry. That would be a legal first.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I just can’t. Look on the bright side, you’ll be out of here in half an hour.’

  ‘Even sooner than that’ said Nobby brightly. ‘We’ll get all this tied up really quickly, because we’re as efficient as owt today. And because we’ll have further enquiries to conduct it could be months and months before this comes to trial, isn’t that right Sergeant Mann?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. And they say that justice delayed is justice denied, don’t they?’

  Nobby Styles tried to make sure that he didn’t laugh out loud as he finished the interview.

  ‘Would you like a lift home in a bit, Terry? Back down to the estate? There’ll be lots of people waiting for you, I’ll bet. So why not arrive in style, in a nice big Police car, eh?’

  Terry wasn’t certain, but he was almost sure that he could people laughing somewhere nearby. And the station certainly seemed busier than usual when he was taken back to the front desk. There were a lot of coppers in for a Saturday morning, and they all seemed very keen to see him off.

  Monday, 27th May

  Alison Thornton walked to the corner shop. It was still sunny, but breezy now and the clouds were piling up away to the west. The wind made her feel on edge somehow. She bought milk, bread, some tea bags and breakfast cereal and was strolling back along the road when she saw them. Two men sitting in a car parked on the opposite side of the road, just before her flat.

  The fear gripped her, but she forced herself not to run. She’d been through every eventuality in her mind over the previous few days, and this was far from the worst. And she had prepared a plan for exactly this eventuality. So she let herself in to the tenement block and pushed the front door firmly closed behind her. But she didn’t climb the stone stairs to her top floor flat. Instead she went out through the back door and down the long, overgrown garden. A cat brushed past her and made her jump, but she’d looked at this escape route from the kitchen window in the flat, and she knew exactly what to do. There was a high wall at the rear of the garden, but she was sure that she could climb onto the roof of the dilapidated summer house that backed on to it, and then get over the wall and into the lane beyond.

  As she approached she started to wonder if there was someone waiting for her on the other side, and she imagined dying in that lane. And for the first time she empathised with Neil Williams. She could imagine how he must have felt in the moment that the ligature tightened round his neck, and he realised that he was going to die, not in thirty or forty years, but right then. But the thought was fleeting, because up close the summer house looked as it was about to fall down. Would it even take her weight?

  She glanced over her shoulder, and saw no-one else in the garden. So she threw her bag up and over the wall, and climbed onto the veranda rail, which creaked but held, and then up on to the roof. She could feel the wooden building flexing and moving under her, so she moved up it slowly on hands and knees, trying to spread her weight. And then she reached out for the top of the wall, and her fingers closed on the cold, grey stone. Then she moved fast, and pushed herself up on to the top of the wall. It looked like a long way down, so she turned and tried to climb down. But she couldn’t find any foot-holds, so she extended her arms fully, then dropped into the lane below.

  Alison let her legs fold under her, but there was no pain, and after a second or two she picked herself up. Her legs felt fine, so she ran to the end of the lane nearest the Meadows. She saw someone’s bicycle through an open gate, so she glanced in, grabbed it, and rode off. She pedaled hard across the Meadows, and left the bike against a wall on the edge of town. The Police Station was a ten minute walk away, and she didn’t hesitate when she reached it. She pushed against the door, then saw the notice. The station was closed, and the nearest one was over a mile away.

  Alison thought about hailing a cab, but what if Cafferty’s men had contacts in the local taxi trade? It wasn’t a chance worth taking, so she set out on foot. And as she walked she realised that this was probably the last time she’d be free for years, and she found herself trying to remember everything that she saw, shop windows, people walking past, a paper bag blowing along the pavement, the feeling of the wind on her face. After a while she noticed that some people were looking at her, and she realised that tears were pouring down her cheeks. Nobody stopped and offered to help, and she was glad that they didn’t.

  The PC behind the desk in the empty reception had a friendly face. He asked what he could do.

  ‘My name is Alison Thornton, and I’m wanted in connection with the murder of Neil Williams in Kendal last month. I want to give myself up.’

  ‘Right you are.’ He made it sound as if Alison was reporting that a lost cat had been found. ‘Just take a seat over there for a minute.’

  Considerably less than a minute later the door buzzed and a harrassed looking middle-aged detective almost fell through the door. ‘Alison Thornton?’ She nodded and got up. ‘Come this way please.’

  ‘Superintendent Robinson is on pre-retirement leave’ said Val Gorham to the thirty officers and civilian staff gathered in the conference room. ‘There will be a collection, and I’m sure we’d all like to wish Eric Robinson a long and happy retirement.’

  There was a smattering of applause, which somehow was worse than no applause at all.

  ‘I will be meeting with heads of department individually over the next day or two, but there are a few things that I wanted to say to all of you. There will be an email to all officers and civilian colleagues, covering the main points, but you’ll soon come to see that I’m very much a people person. So I wanted to talk to as many of you as I could in person. Now there’s no doubt that a great deal of good work goes on in this station, but I’m afraid that in many ways you’ve been let down by your own senior management. This unfortunate business with the Williams murder is just one example of a failure of leadership. So let me be quite clear. From now on we will all follow the procedures that have been developed at great cost and over many years, and that goes for me just as much as for you. I will follow them to the letter, at all times, and I expect you to do the same. The days when Police officers were free to interpret procedure have gone, I assure you of that.’

  If Gorham had expected her new subordinates to look happy about that she would have been disappointed.

  ‘And let me be clear that I will be monitoring all aspects of this station’s performance very closely, against a wide range of criteria, and against the other divisional stations. I have only just started to collate the information, and I will be asking many of you to feed data through to me, but I’m not encouraged by what I see. This station’s clear up rate is very good, especially for crimes against the person, but in some other areas we’re distinctly sub-par. And I hope that you’re all minded to help me change that?’

  There were a couple of muttered ‘yes ma’ams’, which were undoubtedly worse than no ‘yes ma’ams’ at all.

  Andy Hall could feel his phone vibrating in his pocket as Val Gorham spoke. When she invited questions he had a quick look, and saw that he’d missed three calls, all from a number he didn’t recognise. Someone was asking a question about car parking at the station and it looked as if Gorham was going to start writing on the flip-chart, so he went outside into the corridor and returned the call.

  When he walked back in Val Gorham was still trying to come to grips with the parking issue, and now seemed to be refereeing a difference of opinion between one of the parking wardens and a member of the civilian staff, who it seemed had recently got a ticket and was far from happy about it. Gorham didn’t seem to be enjoying it much, and under other circumstances Hall would have left them all to it for a while, but he knew he co
uldn’t.

  ‘Ma’am’ he said, noticing how shiny the new crowns on her uniform were, ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’m there’s been a significant development in the Williams murder enquiry.’

  Val Gorham looked grateful. ‘I’m sorry everyone, but I’m going to have to wrap this up. Remember, my office door is always open, or at least if it is then do feel free to come and talk to me. And remember, good procedures make for good policing.’

  When they reached Gorham’s office Hall passed on the content of the phone call.

  ‘Why did she give herself up?’

  ‘She was convinced that Cafferty’s people were on to her.’

  ‘And were they?’

  ‘It seems so. The DI who she spoke to sent a couple of DCs straight round to her flat. There was no-one outside, but the flat had been broken into and turned over, and it had definitely happened this morning. Under the circumstances I’d like to drive up and collect her myself, and I’ll take Ian Mann with me if that’s OK.’

  ‘No, Inspector, not Sergeant Mann. Absolutely not him. I’m going to clear my diary, and we will travel up together. Give me ten minutes, and would you arrange for a car to take us?’

  Hall was surprised how long the drive to Edinburgh seemed to take, and he was hungry by the time they arrived. Fortunately, the presence of a traffic PC in the car prevented Gorham from asking Hall anything much, and she spent most of the journey reading the Williams file and talking on the phone. That suited Hall fine.

  DI Angus McLeod came straight down to reception, and seemed surprised to see a uniformed Superintendent.